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"AUDRAN" woven in the bottom right corner, with the date "1772" in the galon.

Alternate Titles:

The Cowardice of Sancho at the Hunt (Published Title)

Department:

Sculpture & Decorative Arts

Classification:

Decorative Arts

Object Type:

Textile

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Object Description

In a scene from the Gobelins tapestry series L’Histoire de Don Quichotte (The Story of Don Quixote), based on the enormously popular romance novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the armored knight Don Quixote leads a hunt for wild boar while his terrified companion, Sancho, climbs a tree trunk to the left.

Tapestry weavers rendered the scene as if it were a painting in a gilt-wood frame, hung against a damask-covered wall, which is festooned with thick garlands of fruit and flowers. The picture frame rests on a base piled with armor, an axe, flags, and two cornucopias overflowing with fruit. The tapestry’s title is woven below in yellow thread. The same decorative field, known as the alentours, encloses each of the narrative scenes in the Getty Museum’s set of four Don Quixote tapestries.

This tapestry, and its companions, were woven at Gobelins under the direction of Michel Audran and his son Jean Audran fils. The central scene follows the composition of the painter Charles-Antoine Coypel, while Claude Audran III, Jean-Baptiste Belin de Fontenay fils, Alexandre-François Desportes, and Valande designed the alentours.